The dance known as “twerking” consists of flagrantly gyrating the posterior. Twerking was made popular by Miley Cyrus, and her notorious VMA awards performance with Robin Thicke. Researchers at Oxla’s Science Notes coined the term “stwerking” to refer to twerking while studying.

The researchers recorded the response of hundreds of guys who watched videos of a girl twerking and twerking while studying out of a textbook. The guys were much more likely to get starry-eyed and distracted after watching the girl twerking while studying.

“At first we only ran an experiment to see if twerking’s risqué moves actually stir up a crush in the boys who are watching,” said Experiments Editor Sandra Gutierréz. “But after going over the results of trials at different locations, we discovered that more guys were distracted by the twerking video out front of a coffee shop, which was popular with young girls studying. The girls could be seen in the window while the test participants were watching the twerking video.”

Testing a video of a girl twerking against a video of a girl twerking while studying revealed that guys watching the twerking while studying video were much more likely to fail to respond to the researchers’ request to speculate about what music the soundless video was set to. The participants’ failure to answer the request was presumed to be an indication of stirring romantic interest.

“I think it would be sweet if Miley Cyrus would do some stwerking,” said Sandra. “She could help promote the study of science.”